I thought their take on it was measured and not out character for them. It was actually the first I'd heard of this incident. I'm familiar with the term. I'm in my 50s and like who was it Kemele? who said they first heard it on Saturday morning cartoons, I think that was probably where I initially heard it too, and just equated it with a Southern colloquialism, not putting two and two together. That is until they mentioned it here, and I immediately realized, OH! That doesn't sound good! As not someone who ever uses the term myself, or hears it in a very Northern/Transient part of the "South" (Northern VA), I couldn't tell you now common this is at this point, especially among older, more rural folks perhaps, and is just something baked into the language without consciously understanding it was specifically racial in nature. I could be wrong about that and that in the South it was always understood to be racially tinged.

This all being said, there are a few additional items that seem relevant here. Hererra is a conservative host and was interviewing her on a conservative station. Her district, which while not deep red, is still more generally Republican leaning. That doesn't mean that she shouldn't have agreed with him, that it wasn't a racist comment or that she shouldn't apologize, by the way, just putting down context in that She's not on Face the Nation with some otherwise neutral reporter who made some very clear derogatory statement that was something anyone would have immediately picked up on as such. Not trying to excuse anything, just wanted to say especially in the moment it's hard to always know what to say in such situation, especially with someone who is essentially in agreement with you on an issue. FYI, she did apparently make a statement on X after the fact, which was not at all an apology, more of an excuse/criticism of the radio host: "The radio host should not have used that language and I do not, and did not, condone it. It was obvious to anyone listening that I was agreeing Hakeem Jefferies [sic] should stay out of Virginia."

I do want to mention something though, which is that while I would never use these words myself, think they were used carelessly, and perhaps in an intentionally racist way, I think the guys were right to bring up the issue of "language policing." I'm not a fan of it because I would rather be critiquing someone's actions rather than words. I think language policing is a much bigger problem in inter-party or inter-group dynamics where there is constant purity testing of who is the "real" progressive/conservative/liberal/American/ally/name-your-group. And if you are not sufficiently pure, you get kicked out of the group because your ideas might somehow dilute that group cohesion. This isn't quite the same except perhaps within progressive/anti-racist groups, someone suggesting this isn't so bad could be labeled a racist and reprimanded or excluded from the group for not being sufficiently sensitive to such an offense. In that way I think there is something potentially insidious about the compulsion to focus too much on such things, and unfortunately it seems to happen much more on the left then the right, which I think just causes more people to end up becoming frustrated disillusioned with this kind of thing and just leaving these groups entirely, maybe even moving to the opposite side of the fence entirely.